


'Cause You Took Everything From Me

by angeloncewas



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Niki | Nihachu, Battle, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Depends on how you look at it, Discussion of Death, Doomsday on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Gen, Introspection, Niki | Nihachu-centric, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, from some angles, just an fyi it's in the middle section, make that a tag, no beta we die like l'manberg
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-07
Updated: 2021-01-07
Packaged: 2021-03-18 01:21:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28609740
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angeloncewas/pseuds/angeloncewas
Summary: Amidst a raging battle, Niki burns down the L'mantree. No one expected her to, but the ancient Greeks probably could've forseen it.-Niki wonders if this is how Fundy felt, all that time ago. If the experience of watching an indestructible thing fall to its knees is universal, or something only known to those who burn down the symbols of what they’ve created.
Relationships: Floris | Fundy & Niki | Nihachu, Niki | Nihachu & Ranboo, Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 76





	'Cause You Took Everything From Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from _Mad Woman_ by Taylor Swift, I just felt like it suited. + If you haven't already, I recommend watching Niki's VOD "the biggest lesson yet" for the canon scene.

In legend, the Titanomachy is said to have lasted for ten years. A fierce series of battles played out over the backdrop of ancient Greece, upon which the rulers of the universe were decided.

Wilbur Soot arrived in the world of the Dream SMP not nearly that long ago. All floppy hair and saccharine voice, he was the catalyst to a downward spiral no oracle could have predicted.

Niki knows the past better than she does her own self some days. Standing atop the steep decline of the Prime Path though, breaths short and stiff in her lungs, she cannot help but feel as if the wars she’s fought have spanned across several lifetimes.

They’d gathered in front of the waterlogged ruins of the community house yesterday, another final stand led by the same people who crashed and burned all the others. A president and his exiled right-hand man, an echo of the past from the L’manberg crater.

“Why are you on Tommy’s side?” she’d asked them.

Between the gleaming netherite and the glint in their eyes, she hadn’t thought anyone would shy away from more bloodshed. She just wanted to know how they were so willing to follow him into it.

Zeus was the one who led the Olympians in rebellion, not a mere mortal.

Fundy had leveled his gaze at her, tail swishing while the crowd fell back to mutter amongst themselves. “We’re not on Tommy’s side,” her old friend had promised quietly. “Nobody is.”

“Then why are we risking everything?”

“Don’t you want to save L’manberg?”

Niki hadn’t been sure how to answer Fundy, so she’d kept quiet, painting herself a tight-lipped smile and silently thanking Ranboo for his subsequent outburst. It was unlike hers, but also not at all; he’d sounded as weary as she felt as he adamantly prophesied their failure.

Neither of them will mourn the tattered remains of a country already lost to itself. She will not grieve a house that has been more cage than home for a long time. Ranboo will not miss the way everyone holds onto L’manberg’s history with white knuckles and cracked ribs.

They’ve both already seen it become nothing. They will not covet the lake or the lanterns or the lives left behind, built and destroyed and then built again.

When the gods overthrew the Titans, they did not occupy the land of those who came before them. They left Mount Othrys to its ghosts and let it crumble to ruin.

* * *

In the myths, Hades was never cursed, but he was shunned by those closest to him.

The oldest boy, most-forgotten, swallowed whole by the man who was meant to guide him; he falls by the wayside next to his brothers’ brazenness. Post-victory, he becomes a king, his crown cracked and twisted. He is the ruler of a realm people only fear.

Tubbo scrambles to save Wilbur’s country, dodges bullets and parries sword slashes. He’s still wearing his suit under his armor, ever the president. He’s still bearing the burden of men long-gone. Niki wishes she could yell down to the battlefield without drawing attention to the fact that she’s not in its midst in order to tell him that it’s just not worth it.

“We fought for it in _multiple_ wars,” Tubbo had insisted yesterday.

Ranboo had only laughed in return. “But why?”

Niki knows why, knows why even as HBomb hands her his flint and steel, expression exceptionally calm for the fact that they’re standing mere inches away from weapons of mass destruction, coal dust and the sharp tang of metal in the air.

He knows why too. It’s why he hands her some dynamite along with it.

Death is not evil. It just is. A constant, a rise and fall, a being so cut-and-dry, you’ll lose your mind searching for its hidden meaning. It is, in many ways, the one unfailing escape route.

_Independence, or death._

The fire from her hands dances along the Prime Path, scorches the stone structure on the edge of Jack Manifold’s land and climbs its way up the apiary. A bear to devour all the bees, should any have still been caught between its tall glass panes.

There are none. Animals have incredible survival instincts.

The flourish of Technoblade’s crossbow is momentarily diverted by the stutter of bombs falling from the heavens, and Niki watches Tubbo sigh and glance back toward what he surely considered his home once, now jagged cliffs and exposed ore peeking out of the remains of the spread of abandoned buildings.

Tubbo was one of two who had true citizenship in L’manberg. The rest, once a bustling nation of hopefuls, are part-time players in this political game, visitors from territories better suited for life and love.

Persephone only stays in the Underworld during the cold months. If Hades had just been able to let go of the souls of the already-damned, he might’ve made it to spring alongside her.

* * *

In theory, they are all Theseus, or maybe no one is.

Their nation dies a hero’s death three times over. Twice by Technoblade’s hands, though he seems more determined to push a loose crown and title onto Tommy’s scruffy head than accept the fact that he’s already ruined enough.

Sometimes Niki wonders if they’re so caught up in the grandeur of it all, so armed to the teeth and determined to be indestructible, that they forget what a simple touch feels like. The brush of a hand against a pulse point, the warm press of someone’s skin against your cheek.

Dream reaches down from above and lets L’manberg fall through his fingers like sand.

The sharp sound of Technoblade’s sword crashing against Jack Manifold’s shield renders the people silent momentarily, but mere seconds later Jack has faltered and he’s knocked back towards his somehow-intact fencing.

Tommy and Technoblade go back to yelling at each other from across the slow stretch of Dream’s peaceful, porcelain smile.

Judging by the miniscule waver in the pig’s impassive tone, it seems that he still can’t wrap his head around yesterday’s betrayal. The boy has chosen the people who led him down to the River Styx over Technoblade, he who single-handedly guided Tommy’s soul to safety.

They say Theseus was murdered. Thrown off of a cliff by one of the select few he trusted enough to approach.

Her hands shake as she reaches forward and touches the base of the only sacred thing left. The L’mantree stands tall and arrogant, just on the edge of the blast, some of its leaves sickly and grey.

Niki wonders if this is how Fundy felt, all that time ago. If the experience of watching an indestructible thing fall to its knees is universal, or something only known to those who burn down the symbols of what they’ve created.

“It’s over,” she hears Technoblade say to Tommy.

He isn’t talking to her and he doesn’t know what she’s about to do, but she takes it as her cue and sets the tree on fire.

It catches instantaneously.

Smoke squeezing her chest tight in a matter of seconds, Nikki flashes a salute no one sees. L’manberg’s last stand is consumed completely while everyone’s distracted, fixated on the self-proclaimed protagonist of their story.

“It was never meant to be,” she whispers.

The heroes are all tragic; goodness cannot be found in the same place as the pursuit of victory.

**Author's Note:**

> Before you go:
> 
> \- 10 points to whoever can figure out the... easter egg (?) in the last line  
> \- Anyone else feeling emotionally drained from today? I still have 3 VODs to watch  
> \- You should check out my Tumblr. Same @, I post a lot of ramble-y theories and analyses :)


End file.
